[MSN] 1978 art heist solved. Retired Mass. lawyer says he held stolen paintings

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1978 art heist solved
Retired Mass. lawyer says he held stolen paintings

By Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff  |  February 1, 2006

For 28 years it has stood as the largest unsolved burglary from a private
residence in state history: the theft of seven paintings, including a
Cezanne, from a collector's home in the Berkshires.

Yesterday, the mystery was abruptly solved, as a retired Massachusetts
lawyer told the Globe he has secretly held the stolen paintings, worth
millions of dollars, since 1978.

Hours after his name was publicly linked to the case in a London courtroom,
Robert M. Mardirosian, 71, said in an interview that the paintings were left
with him by the lead suspect in the theft, a Pittsfield man whom Mardirosian
was representing in another case.

The alleged thief, David Colvin, then 31, went to his office in Watertown
seeking advice and lugging a bag full of paintings, the lawyer said.

''He was going to bring them to Florida to fence them, but I told him that
if he ever got caught with them with the other case hanging over his head,
he'd be in real trouble," Mardirosian said. ''So he left them upstairs in my
attic in a big plastic bag."
Pop-up GLOBE GRAPHIC: Berkshires art heist

The paintings had been stolen from the Stockbridge home of Michael Bakwin
over Memorial Day weekend in 1978. It was an easy heist: Bakwin and his wife
were away for the holiday and had long been casual about security for their
inherited art collection. A much harder question, for Colvin and then for
Mardirosian, was what to do with the precious works after the crime.

It was a question, in fact, that went 28 years in search of an answer.

Mardirosian told the Globe that more than a year passed after Colvin's visit
before he discovered the paintings in his attic. Colvin had spent the night
in a room upstairs from his office and left the bag behind, the lawyer said.

By the time Mardirosian made that discovery, Colvin was dead, shot in
February 1979 by two Boston men who had come to his Pittsfield home to
collect on a debt. That left Mardirosian alone in possession of the stolen
paintings.

His first instinct, Mardirosian said, was to return the paintings for reward
money that he thought would be put up by the paintings' insurer. But he
abandoned that plan after learning that not even the most valuable of the
paintings, the Cezanne, had been insured. In 1988, he said, he moved them
from Massachusetts to Monaco and then to a bank in Switzerland for
safekeeping while he figured out a plan for returning them to Bakwin for a
finder's fee or reward of 10 percent of their value.

Mardirosian maintained an active criminal law practice, defending numerous
individuals charged with narcotics, weapons, and white-collar offenses in
Boston-area courts and elsewhere between the early 1960s and 1995 when he
retired at age 60. He now lives in a gated community in Falmouth, where he
works as a full-time painter and sculptor, under the professional name
Romard, often traveling to France to work and sell his artwork.

Mardirosian acknowledged in the Globe interview that he was able to keep
secret his possession of the paintings over the years by working through
lawyers in London, Monaco, and Switzerland, as well as a shell company he
incorporated in Panama, which does not name him as owner. He tried to sell
the paintings on two occasions through the shell company, Erie International
Trading Co., but failed in 1999 and again last year. On both occasions the
Art Loss Register, a London-based company that tracks stolen artwork, was
alerted to the sales and took steps to stop them.

A lawsuit filed last year by Bakwin and the Art Loss Register to stop the
sale of four of the seven paintings led to yesterday's court hearing in
London, during which Mardirosian was identified as sole owner of Erie
International. The judge also ruled that Mardirosian be held responsible for
paying an estimated $3 million in court, legal, and investigative fees
accumulated by Bakwin in trying to get his paintings back.

''We're very pleased with today's results," said Julian Radcliffe, chairman
of the Art Loss Register, who has been trying to regain the paintings for
Bakwin since 1999. ''There's more legal work to be done, but I have no doubt
now that these paintings will soon be returned to their rightful owner."

Radcliffe was sharply critical of Mardirosian for not promptly returning the
works and said he hoped that the FBI would investigate his role.
''Mardirosian should have surrendered these stolen pictures as soon as he
knew of their location,"' he said. ''We will be providing all the help that
we can to the FBI."

Mardirosian said he realizes that the FBI, which originally investigated the
theft, will probably want to question him about how he came to possess and
hold on to the stolen paintings.

He also acknowledged that he not only served as Colvin's lawyer, but also
worked in the same period on an unrelated criminal case against the man whom
the FBI believes was to be the fence of the paintings. That could trigger
questions about whether he actually obtained the paintings in the fashion he
has described.

''I know some things don't look good here, but I believe I have a legitimate
case to make," said Mardirosian. ''I could have sold these a dozen times,
but never did. My whole intent was to find a way to get them back to the
owner in return for a 10 percent commission."

Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, declined this week
to say if the agency would take another look at the case in view of recent
developments.

Bakwin was not available for comment.

The FBI had identified Colvin as a suspect in the case shortly after the
theft, when an undercover federal agent reported that Colvin had approached
him several months earlier and asked him if he would be interested in buying
a Cezanne painting or stolen guns.

After Colvin's death, Bakwin had tried on his own to pursue the case, hiring
private investigator Charles G. Moore of Plymouth to develop leads. Moore
discovered that Mardirosian had represented both Colvin and the alleged
would-be fence in the theft, but with Colvin dead and the alleged fence
refusing to answer questions, the investigation stalled.

For his part, Mardirosian said he was considering filing suit against Bakwin
in US courts for reneging on a deal that Erie Trading made with Bakwin in
1999. Under that agreement, the Cezanne was returned to Bakwin, and title to
the other six paintings was signed over to Erie.

''I figured it was a fair exchange," Mardirosian said yesterday. ''They
would get back the Cezanne, which they were valuing at about $10 million
then, and I would get back the other six, which were valued at about $1
million."

A month after the exchange, Bakwin, feeling he could not sufficiently secure
the masterwork, auctioned off the Cezanne at Sotheby's for $29.3 million.

Radcliffe has contended ever since that the document signing over title of
the other six paintings to Erie International was not legally valid, that
Bakwin had been coerced into signing it to regain his stolen Cezanne, and he
has vowed to contest any effort by Erie to sell the other six.

Last year, when Erie moved to auction four of the six -- two portraits by
Chaim Soutine, an early 20th century expressionist, and two others by French
painters Maurice de Vlaminck and Maurice Utrillo -- at Sotheby's, Bakwin
filed suit in London to stop the auction.

Erie's lawyers in London have contended that the dispute should be handled
through formal arbitration in Swiss courts, as was set out in the 1999
agreement. However, in November, a lower British court upheld Bakwin's
argument that the case should be heard in British courts. Last week, British
High Court Judge Stanley Burnton said that if Erie wanted to appeal that
ruling, it had to put up approximately $50,000 as potential court and legal
fees and ruled that a two-page confidential statement that revealed that
Mardirosian was the sole owner of Erie International should be unsealed.

The document, with Mardirosian's signature at the bottom, was unsealed at
the hearing in Burnton's courtroom yesterday.

''I took [the lawyers'] advice and told them to give up," said Mardirosian.

Mardirosian said his next step will probably be to give back the paintings,
but he wanted to consult with lawyers in Massachusetts to see if there are
any alternatives, including suing Bakwin for breach of contract. Whatever
course he follows, Mardirosian said he would not be arguing his own case
because he now devotes all his time to painting and sculpture, work he says
he loves passionately.

''An occupation that one is really good at sometimes overrides the
occupation that one's heart and soul says one should be doing," Mardirosian
writes on his website of his decision to give up his law practice.
''Fortunately, in some cases that real vocation does bubble up to the
surface and rather explodes full-blown."

Globe correspondent Alana Semuels contributed to this report from London.
Kurkjian can be reached at kurkjian at globe.com.
C Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/